FIVE WEEKS into our 22-week season and still we wait for some sort of stability on our overall leaderboard. The lead has changed hands every week so far and few overall leaders have ever performed quite so abysmally as last week's pacesetters, The Nuts, managed by Paul Sheehan.

In a week with two tournaments, one of them offering bonus money, earnings of just €3,500 were a significant setback for Sheehan. But despite ranking 12,113th for the week, The Nuts are by no means crushed, having dropped just five places to sixth in the overall rankings.

Kevin Ryan is our new leader with Emerald Star, whose total of €769,804 has them just over €3,000 ahead of cufc managed by Dara Costello.

If the team name stands for Carlisle United then Dara is in for more excitement this evening as Carlisle play Leeds in the second leg of the League One play-off semi-final.

If it stands for Colchester United then Costello must hope that his favourite golfers maintain better form than his favourite footballers, who finished bottom of the Championship.

The top two had Briny Baird and Steve Flesch in common ahead of this week's transfer window and Baird features in all five of our leading selections. He's also in the tenth-ranked EL 59, managed by Peter and Emma Lynch, which is the top team yet to use any transfers.

All will be hoping that Baird carries his Sawgrass form into this week's AT and T Classic but the bigger interest will be in our other week-six tournament, the Irish Open at Adare Manor, which offers bonus money plus €400,000 for an Irish winner.

e-mail: golfmasters@irish-times.ie